Diplomatic relations between London
and Peking may not be much helped by Howard Brenton’s new play The
Arrest Of Ai Weiwei. China’s ambassador to London may stab himself with a
chopstick when he sees this script.

Weiwei is a Chinese artist admired by Western modernists. You may remember that he filled Tate Modern with lots of clay seeds.

In 2011 he was arrested by his
country’s communist regime and held for 81 days. They said he was
endangering the security of the state. This show gives an account of
those days and, in the hands of director James Macdonald, does so with
quirky inventiveness.

Art attack: Benedict Wong as Ai Weiwei is led away on stage at Hampstead Theatre

Much of the prison action takes place
inside a large box with collapsing walls. There is some clever camera
work flashed on to side screens. The background tones and white light
accentuate the sterility of the authorities.

In Benedict Wong as Weiwei, the
production has a charismatic actor (though his diction is a bit dicey at
points). David K.S. Tse does well as a cold-livered political official
and various police and army goons are played by a solid young cast.

Mr Brenton undertakes two missions.
The first aim, in which he succeeds, is to depict the unaccountable
power of the Chinese state. How good to see our Howard — a playwright
once thought of as a man of the hard Left — taking such a tilt against
repressive communists. Mrs Thatcher would have approved greatly of this
thread of the play.

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The second aspect is more problematic.
Mr Brenton tries to defend the formlessness of modern art, mistaking
this for liberalism. His Weiwei is convinced that classical art ‘really
can’t cope with today’s life, or today’s understanding of ourselves, or
our universe’. He insists that art has to be a force for political
change.

Does it? It looks to me as if Mr
Brenton, even while attacking communism, still subscribes to orthodox,
hard-Left views about art being a tool for overturning the bourgeoisie
and its manners.

There are scenes in this play when
Weiwei’s working-class gaolers express bafflement at his modern art (eg,
a room full of wooden chairs). It is difficult not to feel that they
are on to something.

Weiwei does not strike one as a likeable man, for all Mr Brenton’s pleading. Too much a snoot.

Weiwei is a great favourite of Tate gallery supremo Sir Nicholas Serota and his cabal.

This play fails to acknowledge that
modern art has left the West — particularly its workers — intellectually
and aesthetically impoverished. And all the while the Serotas of this
world made millions.

Weiwei himself has undoubtedly been
badly treated by the Chinese state. He has been brave. But playwright
Brenton might himself have been braver had he probed these areas in this
still interesting play.

On Approval (Jermyn Street Theatre)

Verdict: Spry museum piece

Rating:

Down at the refurbished Jermyn
Street Theatre they keep reviving forgotten plays which, if not
masterpieces, have curiosity value.

On Approval was written by Frederick
Lonsdale, who in addition to being Edward Fox’s grandfather was
something of a poor man’s Noel Coward. We are in the posh Twenties where
accents are clipped and gents wear tails. Clever central idea. Rich
spinster Maria is thinking of accepting penurious Richard (Daniel Hill)
as her lover.

Maria (Sara Crowe, well cast with her
lovely, occasional shrivelling of the eyes) decides to try Richard out
for a month at her house in Scotland. If he passes muster, she will
marry him. It’s a bit like ordering a husband from the Boden catalogue.

This engaging but creaky play could do
with a few more zingers and a couple of extra characters to spread the
load, but the symmetry of the story is neat and it trundles along.

There is lots of cigar smoking. I felt afterwards as though I had puffed my way through a juicy panatella.